TALCOTT W.Va. (Hinton News) – I may have mentioned this rare photograph before in one of my earlier pieces, but this being my 161st weekly Summers County history, I am not sure. With the 29th annual John Henry Days fast approaching on the 10th-12th of July of this year, I feel it is proper to start paying homage to the Legend of John Henry. People often have the misconception that “legend” being tied to this local tale is somehow fake.
This, however, is quite the contrary; “legends” are rooted in real historical events. The fact that John Henry was one of the characters in the 1995 Disney movie “Tale Tales”, about Pecos Bill and Paul Bunyan, only added fuel to the fire, so to speak. I am a firm believer that John Henry lived and died in a contest at the Great Bend Tunnel at Talcott, WV, between 1870 and 1872.
My grandfather, Bernard Thompson, was born in Talcott in 1927. He grew up there and spent a large part of his life in Talcott. He said that when he was a young boy in the 1930s, many older people in town told similar stories of having been present to witness the contest, or of their parents’ firsthand accounts of the battle that took place at The Great Bend Tunnel.
This is the oldest known photo of the construction of the tunnel, which makes a seven-mile stretch through the Big Bend Mountain. Over 800 men, many of them African American. They cut a 6,880-foot-long tunnel through this mountain.
I love this photo because I like to think that at least one of the men in it witnessed the “legend” firsthand. Granddad always told me, even though I have yet to be able to uncover any documentation of it. The University of Kentucky came to Talcott in the late 1930’s and interviewed the locals who said they had witnessed the fight. Everyone interviewed told such similar “first hand” stories that it helped it to be a proven historic event.
